George N. M.

"It is kind of odd but being in a war is both some of the best memories of my life and some of the worst. " Billy, truer words were never spoken/written. The other odd thing is how fresh the good and bad memories remain. Some of my memories of Viet Nam feel like they are only a couple of years old when, in reality, they have been in my head for over half a century. And memories of smells and tastes remain very clear. The memory of the taste of C rations or LRP rations (Long Range Patrol rations, freeze dried) is like something I ate a few days ago. GNM

The US Department of Labor's inflation calculator only goes back to 1913. $14 in 1913 equal $446.19 in March, 2024. So, that vise was definitely an expensive one when new. Cool family story. I don't know if I could tolerate the thickness of the air at 79', particularly when you add the humidity and the heat. I'll stay here up on the hill, thank you. Better thee than me. "By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

One of the big uses of sand is to prop open the cracks created by high pressure in fracking to increase oil and gas recovery. The cracks in the reservoir rock are created by high pressure and then a sand slurry is pumped in to hold the cracks open when the pressure is released. Some of the best sand is produced along the Mississippi River in MN, WI, and IA. And the deposits are becoming depleated. Also, some alluvial sand and sandstone is unsuitable for some uses because of trace minerals. The sand and river gravel around here is unsuitable for making concrete because it has a small amount of volcanic rocks in it which have an origin in the headwaters of the Laramie River about 60 miles away in Colorado. The volcanic rocks react with the cement in the concrete and cause it to crack and weather prematurely. Sand used in glass making has to be very pure and much of any other minerals as trace constituents make it unsuitable. GNM

Welcome aboard from 7500' in SE Wyoming. Glad to have you. It would help if you put your general location in your profile. This is a world wide forum and we don't know if you are in St.Petersburg, Russia, St. Petersburg, Alaska, or the middle of the Amazon Basin. Very nice vise. I don't think I've ever seen one with a cam and handle rather than a screw. I can't help with ID but there may be someone here who can. "By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

Welcome aboard from 7500' in SE Wyoming. Glad to have you. As you can tell, there seem to be a higher percentage of veterans on IFI than in the general population. We've got all the wars from Viet Nam on and all branches of the military covered. Yes, blacksmithing is great therapy for whatever ails you. I've been at it since 1977 and it has helped me through the rough times and made the good times better. I recommend it for most everyone. George LTC, US Army (Ret) late of 1/C/1/12 Cav, 1 Cav Div (Air mobile), Republic of Viet Nam, 1970-71

Billy, you may have found an ammonite that was buried quickly enough that the ctitter's soft parts were preserved. In life an ammonite looked like a modern nautalus, a squid with its tail stuffed into a shell. Some have straight, cone shaped shell but many have coiled shell, like a snail. Hence the name. The shells are supposed to look like the coiled ram's horns of the Egyptian god Amun/Ammon. I've seen some that are completely replaced by pyrite and have a spectacular gold/brass color. G PS To bad about your geologist ex. MY experience has been that geologists make good partners.

Definitely a recovering geologist. It's one day at a time and you're never completely cured. Whenever I get an urge to make a map or hit a rock with a hammer I call someone up and they talk me out of it. "Hi, my name is George and I'm a geologist." (applause) "I've gone 27 days without hitting a rock with a hammer." (more applause) Unfortunately, Martha, my late wife, and I were codependent since she was also a geologist (and an attorney). On the other hand it has been an interesting and useful field of expertise. I was hired for a couple of legal jobs which involved regulation of the oil and gas industry because of my geology background. In hearings I was the oil and gas industry's and the invronmenalists' worse nightmare, someone who was advising the legislators who knew about the industry and could see past the smoke and mirrors. "What a long, strange journey it has been." G

I had a friend in law school who had previously worked for the Union Pacific Railroad. It was a union shop and you had to belong to a union but it wasn't specified which union. For some reason my friend had a grudge about the regular railroad unions. So, he joined the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, aka Wooblies) which are still an active organization. That satisfied his union membership requirement. The IWW did have good songs. They say you aren't a real radical unless you know ALL the verses to "The Red Flag." GNM PS Here is a link to the IWW's website: https://www.iww.org/

FL Man, I hadn't given spontaneous combustion much thought and I have never heard of it happening on a blacksmith level. I have done some research and it is a murky and complex subject without a lot of clear indications of what to do or not to do. Here are some facts that I have been able to gather, in no particular order: -Some coals are more prone to SC than others. Some coal seams have experienced SC in situ when exposed to atmospheric oxygen. Generally, it seems that lower grade coals such as peat, brown coal, lignite, and sub-bituminous coals which have a higher volitile content are more subject to SC. -The finer the pieces of coal the more chance there is for interaction with atmospheric oxygen and more likelihood of SC. -Larger piles of coal (hundreds or thousands of tons) seem to be more subject to SC because the centers of the piles are more well insulated. It seems to me that in blacksmithing contexts and back when many homes had coal furnaces (amounts of a few tons at maximum) that spontaneous combustion is a pretty low risk but not zero. I have only heard of it happening in the context of large coal storage piles and steam ship coal bunkers (it is probable that the USS Maine blew up in 1898 due to a coal bunker fire overheating an adjacent magazine). I'd like to hear if anyone has any stories of SC occuring in blacksmith or home coal piles. GNM

The coal advice is true for most everything. If you find something you really like/need, buy two or more because they will stop making it. Buy as much coal as you can afford, haul, and have room to store inside. It will last forever inside. Do not store it out in the weather, water and freeze/thaw cycles will cause it to "slake." That is, break down into smaller and smaller pieces until you just have a pile of black, coarse sand. It will still burn but not as well and the coking ability will probably be reduced. GNM

Billy, just print out or email the gold panning posts to your friend and let him do with the information as he will. Or, keep it to yourself if you have been bitten by the gold bug. BTW, don't eat the potato. Yes, as Frosty says, metallic mercury isn't particularly dangerous but some folk go nutso about it. When my son was in elementary school a kid brought in a vial of mercury that he had brought back from a trip to Mexico and, of course, it got broken and spilled. They closed the school and brought in a hazmat team to clean it up. An over reaction IMO. G

There is always more money to be made by mining the miners than mining the earth. Also, mining the investors can be rewarding. The mining millionaires usually sold out at the right time, reinvested and sold out again, wash, rinse, repeat. Very few miners or prospectors ended up wealthy. G

One trick is to pan where there is natural turbulance like the bottom of a waterfall or rapids where the river naturally separates out the light fraction and concentrates the heavy minerals. I was once teaching some folk how to pan and there was a nearby irrigation ditch which came through a culvert under a road with about a 4' drop out of the culvert. It turned out that the little sand bar/beach at the bottom of the plunge pool was about 40% garnets (sand sized but garnets are heavy). Having a dark red tail in the pan was kind of cool. No real use for garnet sand but a good illustration of how Ma Nature does gravity separation. G

PS Gold panning can be a fun hobby, like blacksmithing or metal detecting, where it MAY pay for itself but if you think you are going to get rich you probably have a better chance if you buy lottery tickets. BUT, there is always a chance. Frosty probably has some insights into the realities of gold panning.

Billy, nice work. What kind of steel did you use? Tell him that this is from an old Wyoming geolgist who has used a gold pan fairly often over the years. A gold pan is only an exploration tool. Once you find a place that is promising you set up a sliuce, rocker, long tom, or something else, Trying to do production work with a pan is very hard work, particularly for someone whose knees aren't what they once were. You spend a lot of time in the squatting position working in cold water. Not a lot of fun. I have always liked metal pans better than plastic. They hold up better and you can use them for cooking if necessary. Putting gun blue on a steel pan helps with the color contrast. I'm afraid that there aren't many placer gold locations very close to Ohio. North Carolina is about the closest and that is mostly private land. There are some beach deposits around Lake Superior but, again, there is the land ownership issue. I used a gold pan more for sampling heavy mineral suites to trace hard rock deposits upstream than to try to extract gold although I have panned out some colors. There is a place here, near Laramie, where you have a decent chance of finding placer platinum. GNM